Ticket to Write: Barest of travel plans leads to day to remember

On a recent trip to New England, with a few small goals but nowhere we had to be before evening, my traveling companion and I decided to wander north for most of the length of Vermont.

My friend hoped to find his ancestral burial plot in the tiny hamlet of Peacham.

I hoped to visit St. Johnsbury, where rumors located a Victorian-era natural-history museum and a library, each preserved like a prehistoric dragonfly in amber — or perhaps a taxidermy moose head.

But the closest thing we had to a plan was a determination to meander along the Connecticut River and eschew the interstate.

Along the way, we stopped to stretch our legs in several picturesque river towns, including Bellows Falls, where each building filled in partially forgotten memories I had from an earlier trip. I felt as if I were suddenly remembering a pleasant dream from last week.

After a leisurely drive along U.S. Route 5, we heeded the urging of our Vermont Winery Passport (it was insistent, I tell you) and turned off for Groton and Artesano Meadery, where a lovely young woman regaled us with tales of honey and tastes of, well, not ambrosia, exactly, but close enough on a beautiful spring day in New England.

The Peacham Cemetery, which we located on a small, serene knoll, was as verdant and lovely as my friend had hoped. We split up, armed only with the family name, and soon found the plot where his grandparents and other family members lie. He took pictures and told me about the people buried there, and I mused on the winding paths that families follow. And off we set again.

From my first glimpse of the Fairbanks Museum — a magnificent 1889 building in St. Johnsbury that resembles Ohio State University’s Orton Hall — I was impressed. When I went inside, I fell in love.

The Fairbanks is like a museum of museums. Its handcrafted, wood-and-glass display cabinets were built as an intrinsic part of the lofted, two-story structure; a heartbreakingly beautiful barrel ceiling of dark polished wood crowns it all. The cabinets contain exhibits that are themselves historic, some of the finest extant examples of 19th-century taxidermy and some of the first museum dioramas ever created to display the creatures in their native habitats.

The museum is lovingly maintained, with an expert staff and up-to-date information. I was fortunate enough to be one of the first visitors to try the new audio tour, in which narrators play museum founder Franklin Fairbanks and curators of the past.

We were just minutes from closing time when we entered the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, a public library and art museum founded by another member of the prominent Fairbanks family.

Before my visit, had I fantasized about my perfect library, it would have fallen short of the Athenaeum, another Victorian gem with gingerbread woodwork and decorative spiral staircases leading to stacks on room-length balconies.

The art gallery at the back was another stunning space, dominated by a massive landscape by Albert Bierstadt, “The Domes of Yosemite.” It seemed to bring the mists of California’s Yosemite Falls inside the building, which was designed with the 10-by-15-foot painting in mind. The gallery is topped by a large, ornate skylight, which illuminates the painting’s purple cliffs and lush green valley.

And finally, in a modest display case at the end of a reading table, a 1640 Mercator Atlas — quite rare, valuable and implausible — seemed only to be waiting for admiration from a nonplussed traveling map lover, perhaps one who just happened to be wandering by.

— Steve Stephens can be reached at sstephens@dispatch.com or on Twitter @SteveStephens.